A Brief History of Bedfordshire Lace

Bedfordshire Bobbin Lace - A Product of Its Time

A new style of lace, Bedfordshire, lace emerged, flourished and died
within 50 years.

Background

Lacemaking was an established industry in England by the
beginning of the seventeenth century. There are references to lacemaking in Shakespeare.
Two distinct laces were made at Honiton in Devon and in the East Midlands - Bedfordshire,
Buckinghamshire, Northants, Oxfordshire and East Anglia. Lace production was a cottage
industry, employing men, women and children. Lace was made on large round pillows in a
continuous strip. Lace dealers provided the designs and purchased yardage from the
lacemakers. Larger dealers employed middlemen to make the purchases. Lacemakers were not
bound to one particular dealer. Good workers were encouraged to work for just one dealer
by gifts of bobbins. East Midlands laces were grid based, known as Point Ground, later Bucks Point. The designs on the lace were small and delicate. The
lace was light so it draped softly when worn.

Bedfordshire lace evolved in the mid-nineteenth century as a response to
changes in fashion, technology and the economy.

Features of Bedfordshire Lace

No ground, design is supported by plaits.

Use of petals or square tallies.

Nine pin edging.

Solid woven areas to provide shade areas in the design, often decorated.

Continuous woven trails.

Flowing naturalistic lines.

Bold design visible at a distance.

Crisp appearance.

Fashion

In the eighteenth century dresses had tight bodices with low necks;
bodices finished just under the bust and skirts were draped from this point to the floor,
like those in the recent films of books by Jane Austen. Delicately draped lace was used to
fill in necklines, as shawls, or over skirts. By Victorian times fashions changed. High
necklines, long sleeves pulled in at the wrist, division between bodice and skirt moved to
the waist, huge skirts puffed out by bustles, hoops and petticoats. Lace was still a mark
of wealth and distinction, but needed to be used differently, as collars and cuffs over
dark dress fabrics where some stiffness in the lace was useful. Bold designs were required
so they could be seen at a distance.

Technological Changes

Knitted stockings were made on machines from 1589. Improvements in
cotton spinning provided a new fibre for the knitters which was much finer. Knitting
machines were developed to produce different nets from the finer cotton. By 1808 a net
could be machine made from cotton for three shillings and sixpence (17.5p) for a square
yard whereas the equivalent hand made net cost 60 pounds. By 1809 a machine was patented
that could produce net like the background of Point Ground lace. Such machines were in
general use by 1812. Women were employed to embroider designs on the net; this lace was
much cheaper than hand made and could be purchased by less wealthy people. By the
1840s machine lace could imitate the decorative features of Point Ground lace, so
around 1850 the dealers started promoting patterns for a different style of lace.

Economic Factors

The lace dealers needed a product to compete with machine made lace. The
first machine laces were geometric in style due to the net ground, and were limited first
to straight edges, then to fairly simple edge designs. So the dealers called on the
designers to come up with a lace which could not be copied by machines and that
complemented the fashions of the time. Mr Sargent introduced patterns from Paris. Thomas
Lester brought in a lot of new designs and greatly influenced the style. He introduced
raised wheatears from North Italian bobbin lace in 1856. Use of new prickings sharpened up
patterns - old ones were recopied a lot.

The designers responded by borrowing elements from other lace styles:

Plaits and trails from Cluny lace (French).

Square tally fillings from Honiton.

Leaves from Maltese lace - shown at the Great Exhibition in 1851.

These particular features were chosen for speed of working, contribution
to bold and flowing design and the lacemakers familiarity with similar working
methods. The resulting lace became known as Bedfordshire Maltese as it was made in the
Bedfordshire area, while Point Ground continued to be made in Buckinghamshire and acquired
the name Bucks Point. Beds lace was made in coarse thread for furnishing or table linen
use, or in finer threads for garments, but even the garment lace uses coarser threads than
its predecessors, thus making it quicker to work.

Decline

The heyday of Bedfordshire lace was short. At the International
Exhibition in 1862 nearly all the lace exhibited by East Midlands manufacturers was
Bedfordshire Maltese. Queen Victorias choice of Honiton lace for her wedding veil
gave the Devon lace industry a fashion boost at the expense of East Midlands laces.
Honiton had always been a luxury lace competing with the best quality imported laces.

East Midlands laces were aimed at the middle classes - a typical product
was narrow edging, baby lace. By 1865 machines were able to reproduce
Bedfordshire style lace at a price the expanding middle classes could afford. Hand made
lace declined in popularity when it could no longer be distinguished at a glance from
cheaper machine made lace.

Lace depended on child labour. Children attended fee paying lace
schools, but the proceeds from selling their lace contributed to family income. The 1876
Education Act promoted education for all, so by 1880 full time lace schools had ceased. No
new skilled workers were learning the trade, so it literally died out.

Imports of foreign lace into Britain were prohibited in 18th
century, and practically very difficult during the Napoleonic Wars. Import duties on
foreign lace were gradually lowered from 1826 onwards, and removed completely in 1860,
making it harder for English lace to compete with better made French, Belgian and Italian
lace.

By the turn of the century commercial hand made lace had almost
disappeared from England. Census figures for laceworkers:

1851 26,670

1891 3,376.

Bedfordshire lace is still made by hobbyists all over the world, but
commercial production is limited to machine made lace.

This article was put together from reading books about Bedfordshire
lace; I have not checked any original sources.

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